


Fortunate Sons

by softerEpilogue



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vietnam, Angst, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, The Vietnam AU that no one asked for, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 11:10:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18737836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softerEpilogue/pseuds/softerEpilogue
Summary: In 1967, Bucky gets his draft letter. When they'd said "I'm with you the end of the line", Bucky didn't mean that Steve shoulddrop out of college and follow him to VietnamSteve, Bucky, and the Howling Commandos, through their training and fighting in the Vietnam War





	Fortunate Sons

**Author's Note:**

> this is what happens when you specialize in military history in college. Updating schedule will probably be pretty irregular, but hey, at least it's historically accurate.  
>  

He isn’t surprised when the envelope comes. He doesn’t even need to open it to know what it is. SELECTIVE SERVICE SYSTEM, the envelope says, and his name, bold and black on the front. JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES. YOU ARE HEREBY ORDERED FOR INDUCTION INTO THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES, the letter inside will say. He just stands there for a minute, alone on the doorstep, and tries to think of what he’ll say to his Ma. What he’ll say to Steve. 

He knows Steve’s opinion on the war; it’s a load of horseshit. It’s understandable. There’s a shadowbox over the fireplace in Steve’s apartment—his mom had it made, with the medals they’d handed her when they told her husband had been killed in Korea. He’d died a hero, they’d told her, then left her with the Silver Star and the job of telling eight year old Steve that his father had died, alone at a machine gun, covering his company’s retreat. Even if that hadn’t happened, Steve still wouldn’t be marching into a recruiting station any time soon. He was two years into a dual degree in Political Science and Art, and they didn’t draft college kids. 

Bucky screws up his courage and opens the door. His sister Becca’s sitting at the table in the kitchen, making rude noises at her homework. His Ma is putting something in the oven, and turns when she hears his work boots on the tile. She smiles until she sees the look on his face, the white envelope clutched in his hand. He still hasn’t opened it. He puts it down on the table, gently, like it’s a loaded gun. Which it is, in a way. And then he goes over to the phone and calls Steve. He hears Ma and Becca’s voices rising in the background as he waits for Steve to pick up, counting the rings. After six, Steve answers.

“Want to come for dinner? Got something to tell you.” Bucky is carefully casual, like he’s not about to bring his world crashing down around his ears, like Becca hasn’t just run out of the kitchen to her room. Like his Ma isn’t sitting at the kitchen table, her face whiter than the paper she’s holding. Steve walks in twenty minutes later, and immediately after he sits down at the table, he sees the letter. “Oh,” Steve says.

“I leave the 10th.” Bucky says. He picks at a thread on the tablecloth and doesn’t look up. He’s got no clue what’s going through Steve’s head right then, and he can’t quite make himself look Steve in the face. The timer on the oven dings, and Bucky’s ma snaps into action, pulling out the casserole and shoveling huge portions onto their plates. Steve’s real quiet, all through dinner. He looks, when Bucky can finally bring himself to look at him, like he’s thinking. After dinner, Steve doesn’t say anything about the white, Vietnam-sized elephant in the room. He just stands up, thanks Mrs. Barnes for dinner, pushes his chair back under the table, grabs his dad’s old worn-out leather jacket off the hook, and heads for the door. Bucky follows. 

“Steve,” Bucky starts to say, but then he stops. He doesn’t know what to say here, doesn’t know how to make this okay. Steve turns to him and Bucky can’t even begin to decipher all the emotions playing across his face. Steve pushes his hair out of his eyes, and looks hard at Bucky, like he’s trying to memorize him, and then, without warning, he pulls Bucky into a tight hug, and all Bucky can think, hysterically, is of a piece of a poem, he doesn’t know by who. 

_We, two boys together clinging,_

He buries his face in Steve’s broad shoulder and lets himself imagine, for one instant. And then Steve lets him go, tugs his jacket straight, and walks out the door. Bucky doesn’t try to stop him. He just stares down the street after him and thinks about the paper on the counter, ordering him to the Greyhound station at 6 am next Friday, and tries not to hear Becca crying from upstairs. He remembers, belatedly, the next line of the poem.

_One the other never leaving._

 

Steve’s feet hit the pavement and he starts walking. He doesn’t know where he’s going—His mind is racing in circles and his stomach still feels like it crashed through the floor, the same way it’s felt since he saw that paper on the table, heavier than the black ink on the paper. Steve doesn’t know where he’s going, but when his feet stop him in front of the recruiter’s office, he’s less surprised than he should be. Sure, he thinks the war’s a whole mess they shouldn’t be in in the first place, that domino theory is a load of horseshit and that the government should be paying more attention to what’s going on at home than it is what’s happening half a world away, but that’s not why he’s here. He’s here, doing the thing Ma told him to never do, because when Steve said “I’m with you ‘till the end of the line,” he meant it; not just to the end of the bus route, not just in a hundred back-alley fights, he meant it to hell and back. 

Steve’s never been one to half-ass anything. Back before his medically-assisted growth spurt, his big mouth had gotten him into more than a couple scraps that Bucky’d had to pull him out of. (The big mouth hadn’t changed, but his odds in a fight tends to be better these days.) 

So when he squares his shoulders and walks into the recruiting office that evening, he knows what he’s doing. The sergeant behind the desk is watching the clock, waiting for it to hit seven so he can go the hell home, when Steve walks in. The man looks at him like he’s lost his damn mind when he says he wants to sign up, but he shrugs and hands over some paperwork. 

“If you don’t mind me asking,” The sergeant says, as Steve’s reading over the contract, “Why the hell would a college kid like you want to sign up?”

Steve thinks about the question for a moment, and decides on honesty. 

“My buddy’s draft number came up. Can’t let him go get his dumb ass killed or his Ma’ll never forgive me.”

“Must be a damn good friend,” is all the sergeant says, when Steve asks if he can leave with Bucky. 

“He’s my brother,” Steve replies, even though he’s had some decidedly un-brotherly thoughts about Bucky since, well. Ever, basically. Since they were twelve and rode the bus home together, _to the end of the line, Buck_ , since they were six and Bucky pulled his skinny ass out of a losing fight on the playground. The man behind the desk just nods, like he knows exactly what Steve’s talking about, like he knows that _brothers_ doesn’t always mean _blood_.

It’s disturbingly easy to sign your life away to the US Army, Steve learns. Two days after he walked into the recruiting station, he gets off a bus down the street from the park with big white envelope under his arm. It’s got his orders, all his paperwork, and a bus ticket. The recruiting sergeant even got him on the same bus out as Buck. Same basic training company, even. Mentally, he ticks off everything he’s going to have to do in the next few days. He’s dropped out of college, (Bucky’s going to kill him), packed his stuff (took maybe forty minutes,) and signed his life away. He looks at the packet of papers in his hand and tucks it into his jacket, and walks over to St. Augustine, stops in and lights a candle for his parents. He ends up just sitting in a pew, staring at the stained glass in the transept; The afternoon sun is streaming in, illuminating Saint Michael as he stands triumphant, a flaming sword in his hand, his foot resting on the head of a slain demon. Holy Michael’s face looks oddly serene. Steve wonders how the demon would feel about that—there’s a sword in his neck and the guy doesn’t even have the decency to look sorry about it. He winces, and crosses himself. Someone sits beside him and Steve’s head turns so quickly his neck pops, but it’s only old Father Thomas.

“Feeling troubled, Steven?” Father Thomas asks, and Steve suddenly feels like he’s ten again, sitting in the pews with his ma. The Father hasn’t changed a bit since Steve was a kid; the same neat grey hair and round glasses and manners as neat and quiet as his starched white collar. Father Thomas married his parents. Baptized Steve. Said the last rites for his mother. So Steve can’t help but to answer.

“I guess so, Father,” The father sits, and waits for him to continue. “Buck’s draft number came up.”

Father Thomas nods, in his grave old way. He doesn’t know Bucky much, ‘cause Bucky’s Jewish, but him and Steve have been attached at the hip for so long that you can’t really know one of them without the other.

“I’ll say a prayer to Saint Michael in his name,” Father Thomas says, “He may not be Catholic, but I’m sure God won’t mind.”

“Say one for both of us, Father?” Steve asks, and pulls the envelope out of his jacket. Father Thomas’s eyes widen, ever so slightly, behind his spectacles. 

“Yours too?” Father Thomas can’t conceal his surprise. “I thought you were in college, Steven.”

Steve ducks his head, like it’ll make him small again, like maybe Father Thomas will see that all he’s trying to do is what he’s always done, be too dumb to run away from a losing fight.

“I, uh, kind of…dropped out. And enlisted.” 

Father Thomas leans back in the pew and sighs, like he knows he shouldn’t have expected anything else. 

“I couldn’t let Buck go by himself,” Steve tries to explain, and he thinks, somehow, that Father Thomas understands. Steve makes his escape then, muttering some half-baked excuse. He stops at payphone down the street, and dials Bucky’s number. The phone picks up on the third ring, and Bucky answers, cussing the whole time. It sounds like he’s stubbed his toe, not like he’s cussing at Steve. Which, Steve realizes guiltily, he’s got every right to do; Bucky told Steve he got drafted, and Steve had promptly fucked off and not even called him for two days. Oops.

 

Bucky hasn’t heard from Steve in three days. It’s probably the longest they’ve ever gone without talking since Steve got the measles in seventh grade and had to be quarantined for a week. He’s a goddamn mess about it, almost as bad as Becca when that kid she dated last year dropped her for Maggie Lynn. He’s doing a decent job of hiding it, though. He’s not mooning around the living room like Becca, at least. They all are, going along, pretending nothing’s wrong. His ma’s acting like he’s going on a trip, making all his favorite foods like she’s fattening him up, like he’s going to Mexico or France or something, not fucking Vietnam. He can’t really blame her, he guesses. Becca’s putting on a brave face, telling him if any of his soldier buddies are cute that they should drop her a line. All his pa had to say when he saw the paper, ominous on the kitchen counter, was “Guess you’ll finally get a goddamn haircut and move the hell out.” Bucky doesn’t take it personally. Pa’s always been an asshole. There’s the silver lining, Bucky guesses. No more dealing with _that_ dickhead. 

The phone rings, and Bucky doesn’t run to answer it. He doesn’t. Really. He also doesn’t stub his toe on the coffee table, almost fall flat on his face, and nearly knock the phone out of the receiver on the way down. So he definitely doesn’t accidentally cuss into the phone as he answers it, because Becca’s damn cat stands directly on the toe he definitely didn’t just bust on the coffee table. 

“You kiss your mother with that mouth, Barnes?” Bucky doesn’t perk up like a dog that’s seen a bone when he hears Steve’s voice over the phone. He doesn’t. 

“Nah, just Eddie Dessico’s mother, it’s all good.” He replies, mostly on instinct.

“Hey, you got a sec? I gotta tell you something.” Steve sounds nervous. Well, to anybody but Bucky, he’d sound cool as ice, but Bucky’s known him since they were six. He’s nervous as hell. And when Steve’s nervous, so’s Bucky.

“Yeah, sure, fire away.” 

“I’m at the payphone down by the park, see you in ten?” And then he hangs up. 

Bucky cusses under his breath again, but he grabs his jacket and ducks out the door. 

Steve’s waiting for him by the park, leaning on the low wall. Bucky still isn’t used to seeing him like this, all tall and filled out. Part of him thinks, in the back of his mind, Steve’s always going to look like he did when they met; a head shorter than everyone in the class and twenty pounds lighter, perpetually coughing or wheezing or sitting on the sidelines in gym class, because his heart couldn’t take the strain of baseball, which sucked, because Steve loved baseball. And then, when they were sixteen, the year before Steve’s mom died, she’d gotten him into some crazy trial program out in Jersey, and Steve had grown a foot and gained sixty pounds over the course of a year. 

Steve waves to him, like Bucky could miss his six-four, two hundred-pound, All-American ass, glowing like gold in the setting sun. He’s cut his hair, and it does something funny in the pit of Bucky’s stomach that he chooses to ignore. The same way he ignores the line of skin exposed where Steve’s t-shirt’s pulled up away from his jeans as he waves to Bucky. Bucky approaches him, a little nervous. Steve’s got something in his hand, a piece of white paper. Bucky’s stomach drops, before he remembers that no, it can’t be a draft notice, because Steve’s in school. He’s got at least two more years, and the whole damn mess might even be over by then, so there’s no way that-

Steve hands him the paper, in a rush, like if he doesn’t do it now, he might never. Bucky reads it. He's barely finished the first page when he starts yelling, and for a minute, Steve half wonders if his Ma's come back from the dead and possessed his best friend, because he’s doing Sarah Rogers and her Irish temper proud. 

“What the fuck.” Is all he can say. “You _enlisted_? What the _Fuck_? Steve, you’re in college, you _dumbass_ , you can’t go to fucking _Nam_!” 

When he stops to take a breath, Steve cuts him off. “I dropped out,” Steve says, and he’s got that damn set to his chin, the one Bucky knows too well, the one that says he’s made his mind up and nothing short of literal divine intervention is stopping him. Bucky isn’t exactly what you’d call religious, but he flicks his eyes skyward and lets himself pray for a bolt of lightning or something. No dice. “I’m not letting you go by yourself, idiot.” Steve continues. “You’ve had my back since we were six, I’m just returning the favor. I’m with you ‘till the end of the line.” Steve says, and Bucky wants to smack him, but he also wants to hug him, because _thank god_ , he’s not going into this alone. Of _course_ Steve would do something as stupid as follow Bucky to a war he doesn’t believe in. Bucky wants to be mad that Steve’s throwing away his chance to stay out of the war, to stay home. But some horrible little part of him can’t help but be glad; they’ve been a team since they were six goddamn years old, and not even a war is going to drag them apart.

Bucky smacks him upside the head anyway, and grumbles good naturedly about how Steve’s an idiot and how it’ll be a miracle if they don’t both die of stupidity before they even get to ‘Nam. Then, he drags Steve home, and Mama Barnes also starts yelling at him for dropping out of college, and Steve would really like it if the linoleum just swallowed him whole, because fighting a guy who’s got fifty pounds on you and a couple of friends is one thing, but a five-foot-three enraged Italian-Jewish woman is goddamn terrifying. At this point there’s no use even being nervous about the army, or Nam, or the Viet Cong, because Mama Barnes is going to kill them both before they even get there.

**Author's Note:**

> poem is by Walt Whitman


End file.
